herodotus

say, some of his feathers are of gold colour and others red, and inoutline and size he is as nearly as possible like an eagle. This birdthey say (but I cannot believe the story) contrives as follows:--setting forth from Arabia he conveys his father, they say, to thetemple of the Sun (Helios) plastered up in myrrh, and buries him inthe temple of the Sun; and he conveys him thus:--he forms first an eggof myrrh as large as he is able to carry, and then he makes trial ofcarrying it, and when he has made trial sufficiently, then he hollowsout the egg and places his father within it and plasters over withother myrrh that part of the egg where he hollowed it out to put hisfather in, and when his father is laid in it, it proves (they say) tobe of the same weight as it was; and after he has plastered it up, heconveys the whole to Egypt to the temple of the Sun. Thus they saythat this bird does.74. There are also about Thebes sacred serpents, not at all harmful tomen, which are small in size and have two horns growing from the topof the head: these they bury when they die in the temple of Zeus, forto this god they say that they are sacred. 75. There is a regionmoreover in Arabia, situated nearly over against the city of Buto, towhich place I came to inquire about the winged serpents: and when Icame thither I saw bones of serpents and spines in quantity so greatthat it is impossible to make report of the number, and there wereheaps of spines, some heaps large and others less large and otherssmaller still than these, and these heaps were many in number. Thisregion in which the spines are scattered upon the ground is of thenature of an entrance from a narrow mountain pass to a great plain,which plain adjoins the plain of Egypt; and the story goes that at thebeginning of spring winged serpents from Arabia fly towards Egypt, andthe birds called ibises meet them at the entrance to this country anddo not suffer the serpents to go by but kill them. On account of thisdeed it is (say the Arabians) that the ibis has come to be greatlyhonoured by the Egyptians, and the Egyptians also agree that it is forthis reason that they honour these birds. 76. The outward form of theibis is this:--it is a deep black all over, and has legs like those ofa crane and a very curved beak, and in size it is about equal to arail: this is the appearance of the black kind which fight with theserpents, but of those which most crowd round men's feet (for thereare two several kinds of ibises) the head is bare and also the wholeof the throat, and it is white in feathering except the head and neckand the extremities of the wings and the rump (in all these parts ofwhich I have spoken it is a deep black), while in legs and in the formof the head it resembles the other. As for the serpent its form islike that of the watersnake; and it has wings not feathered but mostnearly resembling the wings of the bat. Let so much suffice as hasbeen said now concerning sacred animals.